Wow, want to see a Gen Y perspective on how social media
is going to change things? Here is a summarized 10 Personal Branding Predictions for 2010 from Dan Schawbel. Dan is positioning himself to be a kind of “Gen Y Tom Peters” and he has cut out quite a little niche for himself. Regardless, the list is interesting and brings out a couple good points that might be weak signals.
10 Personal Branding Predictions for 2010
10) Online identities becoming as routine as employer drug tests
Looking for a job? What does your online identity say about you? Today, 45% of companies use social networks as background checks and Dan predicts this to jump to 100% of companies in 2012. One hundred percent might be a stretch, but the 45% today was a surprise.
9) More people working for free to build brand equity
I think this is tied into the Gen Y / millennials being more civic minded, however it indicates that if you are looking for your first job, be prepared to do some volunteer work.
Social media being used more for career development
Interesting. I saw a post the other day where a person lamented, “I can find information externally using Google faster than I can internally”. What if those internal people ran across an external post from another internal person. That would make you stand out, no?
7) Monetization through branding becomes clear
Yeah, if you have 20 minutes and some kind of internet savvy, you can plug in a Google adwords account on your site you too can start raking in the dough (note sarcasm). Unfortunately, wordpress (my blog host) does not allow external adverts. Boooooooo!
6) Video becomes a brand-standard
Great, more lame videos.
5) People being forced to take a niche
Er. Not sure how this plays out in a corporate setting. I can see this in the wild and wooly internet arena when you have bazillions of blogs, but cant see the relevance in the Fortune 500 setting.
4) Your voice becomes stronger than your resume
Clear… see number 10
3) The new employment contract
I sure hope P&G is not planning to take my blog someday… but makes for an interesting conversation for someone who is hired as an influencer.
2) More people understanding their brand
I am but a neophyte, so proving Dan right, I just bought his book “Me 2.0” on Amazon for about $9 and “The Brand You 50” from Tom Peters book for $.99. Hmm….
1) Transparency across the web from social networks to search engines and back.
Oh now this is interesting. Google will include to Twitter Tweets and Bing will include Facebook status updates in their search results instead of just previously crawled pages. For any of you who have managed SEO for a website, you know that page one (top 4 positions) in Google (Bing, yahoo, etc) is the golden key to traffic. Will be interesting to watch as search results include REAL TIME information. The future is going to be fun.. cannot wait!
Shawn Grubb
